Can anyone make me like iTunes?!

peanutismint · 21 Jan 2008 at 11:49

I hate iTunes. It's a great player with some awesome features, but a few terrible choices in programming which cripple it, imho. The biggest factor for me is that iTunes expects you to get music into it in a certain way, either through the iTunes shop or through ripping from CD. Well I obtain a lot of music from other sources, so every time I get a new record or whatever, I have to manually add it to the iTunes library, and I'm so bad at remembering what's new, what I've already added and what I haven't, I choose not to use it, rather preferring to organise my music externally via folders and what have you, and listen in something more WinAmp like, such as VLC.

I'd love to start using iTunes, but I'm just wondering if there's any way to have it 'watch' my music folders for new tracks and add them to the library automatically. If I have to do it manually, I'll end up spending half my life trying to keep my library synced with my music folders.....

Any ideas?

(the same goes for iPhoto.... any ideas?!)

Willis · 21 Jan 2008 at 13:38

Nope i don't like it, went to burn a disk yesterday and no burn icon. Not sure if because all my music is on my ipod. I'm really trying to stick with it but it just doing my head it as I'm like you its all in different folders. :mad:

WotDa · 21 Jan 2008 at 13:44

Willis said:
Nope i don't like it, went to burn a disk yesterday and no burn icon. Not sure if because all my music is on my ipod. I'm really trying to stick with it but it just doing my head it as I'm like you its all in different folders.

Burn from a playlist.

DuncyBoy · 21 Jan 2008 at 13:44

I bit the bullet about 6 months ago and got it to organise my music in one folder and copy to that folder whenever I add new tunes and it's so much easier.

I always used it just for general playback and playlists but I've since got the hang of Smart Playlists, Video Playlists, "Skip When Shuffling" etc and I wouldn't use anything else now.

I never got my head round WinAmp and never liked WMP so I much prefer iTunes full stop.

Willis said:
...went to burn a disk yesterday and no burn icon. Not sure if because all my music is on my ipod. ...I'm like you its all in different folders.

Dunno what the problem is there? Shouldn't matter where the tracks are on your computer for you to burn a disc?

peanutismint · 21 Jan 2008 at 13:52

DuncyBoy said:
I bit the bullet about 6 months ago and got it to organise my music in one folder and copy to that folder whenever I add new tunes and it's so much easier.

I always used it just for general playback and playlists but I've since got the hang of Smart Playlists, Video Playlists, "Skip When Shuffling" etc and I wouldn't use anything else now.

So if you let it organise your music, does it automatically update when you add new folders/tracks to your library? And can you stipulate how you'd like it to arrange your folders etc? Like by Artist, Album etc?

Also, what are smart playlists and 'skip when shuffling'? I'm VERY anal when it comes to file/folder management, so I think it'd take a very good system to make me adjust to it, rather than it adjusting to me....

Ender · 21 Jan 2008 at 14:08

Smart Play lists - http://www.smartplaylists.com/comments.php?id=P45_0_1_0

DuncyBoy · 21 Jan 2008 at 14:14

peanutismint said:
So if you let it organise your music, does it automatically update when you add new folders/tracks to your library? And can you stipulate how you'd like it to arrange your folders etc? Like by Artist, Album etc?

Also, what are smart playlists and 'skip when shuffling'? I'm VERY anal when it comes to file/folder management, so I think it'd take a very good system to make me adjust to it, rather than it adjusting to me....

No, I think it'll only organise your folders one way: Artist > Album in whichever folder you want (although it still always stores the iTunes files like Album Artwork and Library in My Music on a PC- I have my tracks in D:\Music)

So, for example, it goes Music/Daft Punk/Discovery and then the tracks. If you don't have Album Artist up to date it'll store them under Various, I think.

Smart Playlists are where you can set criteria for a Playlist and it automatically updates. I have a Smart Playlist called "Soundtracks" and the criteria for that is any track with the Genre set to Soundtrack. If I add some new tunes from a film or a game, if the Genre's set right, it'll be added to the Playlist automatically and ditto for the iPod. On a PC hold down Ctrl & Alt & N to make one or go to File "New Smart Playlist. There's all kinds of criteria to sort by- Album, Artist, Track Length, Rating etc. It can be tricky at first- I wanted to make a Playlist that had all my Manics songs plus James Dean Bradfield's solo album on. I set the criteria to be "Artist Is Manics" and a second rule for "Artist is JDB" and no tracks were added. I then realised I had to change it to "Artist is MSP" OR "Artist is JDB"

Skip When Shuffling means if you "Play All" or just have a long Playlist, that track or video won't be played when Shuffle's on. It's handy if you've got, for example, an Audiobook or stand-up gig on mp3 and don't want it to play when you're just listening to songs at random. Handy for videos too. Files with it set to Yes will be ignored when Shuffling.

Hope I haven't waffled too much!